While you're here, don't forget to check out the QUICK LINKS block and our list of FAQs!

Happy Moodling!

]]>Due to the upcoming Electrical and IT Service Interruption, Moodle will be offline from NOON, Saturday, August 27th to approximately 4 PM on Sunday, August 28th.]]>VCC Moodle has been upgraded from version 2.8 to 3.0, as of July 28, 2016. There are several new features you may find useful and maybe even fun! Check out the Moodle Upgrade Information course shell to view what you need to know (and what's nice to know). There's even a video that will show you most (but not all) of the changes. You can easily access the information shell, within Moodle, from your My Courses list or drop-down menu.

Happy Moodling!

]]>The Moodle MOOC, "Teaching with Moodle: An Introduction" is coming back in August!

What's MOOC, you ask? It's a Massive Open Online Course!

Starting Sunday, August 7th, you have the opportunity to participate in a FREE four-week course (3-4 hours/week, recommended), designed for teachers who are new to the Moodle LMS (Learning Management System).

This course, *run by Moodle HQ (Headquarters), is also a great opportunity to connect with others in the Moodle community to share ideas and anything that could help inspire better teaching practices.

* Although we encourage you to consider participating in this free course, the CID and DL Support are not involved in the development or delivery of the course in any way.

]]>Our annual Moodle upgrade is scheduled to take place at the end of July. We will be upgrading from Moodle 2.8 to Moodle 3.0. As is always the case, Moodle will be unavailable during the upgrade procedure, so mark your calendars!

Our Moodle server will go offline the evening of Tuesday, July 26 is expected to be back online by 4:30pm on Wednesday, July 27th.

Here are some of the changes you can expect, after the upgrade:

drag & drop question types

easier course section/topic editing and deleting

option to display file upload dates

easier table editing within the ATTO editor

unwanted message deletion

We are currently put together a Moodle page that will explain all of the changes in more detail we'll let you know as soon as that's available for you to check out. Also, as usual, we'll give you an opportunity to log into the test site to play around with it and see how your course will appear.

Keep an eye on your VCC email for more details, coming soon!

]]>Welcome Back to Moodle!

In order to help make your return to Moodle a little easier, here's a list of the top things you need to know:

DL Support has created and maintains many resources to help you learn Moodle, as well as answer your questions as you develop and deliver your Moodle courses. The most important of these resources is our DL Support page, found at http://cid.vcc.ca/dlsupport or http://dlsupport.kayako.com. This page is also easily accessible from the MY COURSES drop-down menu, as well as the HELP FOR INSTRUCTORS block which you see only when you have editing turned ON in your course. From our support page, you can:

Search our Knowledgebase

Submit a Ticket

View Frequently Asked Questions

Request a 1-on-1 meeing

Request a new course shell

When contacting DL Support, it is extremely helpful if you provide us with your Moodle course ID. This is the number that appears at the end of the URL when you are viewing the main page of your course. (see KB1115 - Using Moodle Course ID)

]]>Moodle will be upgraded from version 2.6 to 2.8, beginning tonight, starting at 9:00pm. During the upgrade process, Moodle will be unavailable. We hope to have it completed by the end of the day tomorrow, but it may take longer. Follow us on Twitter for the latest updates.]]>As previously announced, VCC Moodle has undergone some slight visual changes. It is highly recommended that you have a quick look at the a summary of these changes by working through the Essential Theme Lesson, in Moodle. This lesson should take you less than 10 minutes. View the lesson now. Note that, because of the type of changes made, VCC Moodle may seem slightly slower. However, this is only temporary.]]>Our Moodle server space is not infinite and occasionally we receive warnings that it is nearing capacity. When this happens, we have to quickly delete courses or files to free up space. We find courses that contain very large files -- usually video, audio or PowerPoint(tm) files -- and we contact the owner of the course to discuss what we can do with these files to clean them up. We also search for old courses that haven't had recent activity and delete those. These re-active measures can be stressful for us and the faculty members involved and definitely aren't ideal.

So, what can we do to be PRO-active? We ask that you assist us with this by:

Deleting old courses (let DLSupport know which courses can be deleted*)

Please note that sign-up is required for Moodle Explorations sessions. All sessions are subject to cancellation due to lack of registrations.

Hope to see you soon!

]]>To help instructors ready their Moodle courses for September, DL Support will be available for DROP-IN ASSISTANCE to answer your Moodle-related questions, or demonstrate the new features implemented with our recent upgrade to Moodle 2.6.

You are welcome to drop-in at any time during any or all of the following four sessions.

Wednesday, August 27, 9:00am-12:00pm (Downtown, Room 830)

Thursday, August 28, 1:00-4:00pm (Broadway, Room 2701)

Wednesday, September 3, 8:30-11:30am (Broadway, Room 2701)

Thursday, September 4, 1:00-4:00pm (Downtown, Room 830)

]]>As of now, anyone in a “Teacher” or “Manager” role, in Moodle can search for students for manual enrolment using the student number. Previously, you could only search by name, which would often return multiple results. Without seeing the student number, it could be difficult to identify the correct user account.

As you can see in the attached screenshot, showing my own employee account and student account, you can enter a name OR a student number into the search field. Even if you’ve entered a name, you will be able to see the associated student numbers so that you can chose the correct account. Notice that employee accounts will have usernames instead of student numbers.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTES:

- You should NEVER enrol a student as a “TEACHER to your course, as this may expose private student numbers and email addresses to them. Instead, if you wish your students to have editing rights in a course, use the STUDENT-TEACHER role.

- Any VCC employee taking a Moodle course, as a student, should be enrolled and logged in to Moodle using his/her student account, not employee account.

]]>NOTE: Despite the login fields in the upper left corner of this page, there is NO NEED TO LOGIN to this site. You only need to log in if you want to track a ticket that you have submitted previously.